Daily Archives: March 11, 2013

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

On Translating Latin On This Particular Plateau

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Imbolc                                                  New (Bloodroot) Moon

Latin.  I’ve found a method that works for me right now and I want to write it down before I lose it.  First, translate one sentence a day.  Keep going until several verses have been finished, perhaps two or three days before a session with Greg.  Then, go back and review, one sentence at a time, the work that has been done.

In that review nail down the whys of the translation and identify specific questions, i.e. type of subjunctive clause, that extra word left over.

In general I’ve discovered that the faster I want the process to go, the more anxious I get and the less attention I pay to the details.  Yet, in Latin, the devil is truly in the details.  A great spiritual and intellectual exercise for me, the paying close attention demanded by my buddy Ovid.

 

Health, Writing

Low Grade Disharmony, Dis-Ease

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Imbolc                                                                         Valentine Moon

Looking back some low grade disharmony began to sneak up on me last Wednesday.  Feeling punk.  Over the weekend I laid low.  I find it a DIY MFA for writing a couple of days ago.   It had some interesting suggestions for reading as a writer and with a specific purpose, so I followed them while sleeping and resting.

That is, in this instance I read the competition.  Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  A middle-school Harry Potter-like story of a twelve year old who discovers he’s the son of Poseidon.  It’s fun, a bit, well, juvenile, yet captivating and the plot has a propulsive force.

The gods and demi-gods, monsters and other creatures of the sacred world abound.  I love this stuff, even in its middle-school form.  Once I’ve finished the third of the Percy Jackson books, I’m going to start on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.  Also on the list is re-reading Tolkein.  Of course, I read him and a long, long time ago.

There are three other lists on the reading with purpose idea: one is classics, another informative and the third is contemporary.

The same process asked for my 5 all-time favorite books.  This kind of list changes, but here is the one I wrote down on that day:  Steppenwolf, 100 Years of Solitude, Mists of Avalon, Metamorphoses, the Bible.

Now I’m feeling better, though not all the way there, and its time to get cracking on that revision.  Time’s, well, we all know what time is.  And we don’t get more.